Steelers cornerback Senquez Golson carries a gun with him for protection when he’s back home in Mississippi, but he dodged a figurative bullet by flying through Alabama on his way back to Pittsburgh.
The oft-injured cornerback was not arrested when TSA agents found a gun and 23 rounds of ammunition in his luggage at the security checkpoint at the Mobile airport in April.
“They were telling me good thing I was in the state of Alabama. That was a blessing,” Golson said, via Jeremy Fowler of ESPN.com.
“I just went through the airport rushing, threw everything on the belt, and it just rolled through,” he added. “They kind of looked at me, and I said, ‘I know I don’t have any liquids in there.’ They were kind of looking at me, we were both looking with confused faces. Good thing I was with some good people. The officers there, they were good people.”
While other players have been arrested this offseason for similar forgetfulness (though charges against wide receiver Louis Murphy were dropped), the law in Alabama allows people to carry guns in an airport (though he could have been fined since it wasn’t checked in a hard-sided case).
But airport police chief Brian Fillingim said Golson was friendly and immediately contrite, recognizing he had simply forgotten to take the gun out of his bag when he packed. Golson said he didn’t intend to take it with him to Pittsburgh, but intends to collect it when he returns to Mobile en route to his home in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where he has two young sons.
“Personal protection -- it gets kind of weird down there sometimes,” Golson said.
(Hopefully he’s a little more aware of the location of his firearm as the boys grow up.)
With that matter behind him, the 2015 second-rounder can concentrate on getting on the field. That’s something he hasn’t done in his two years with the Steelers, following a torn labrum and a Lisfranc injury which each required surgery.